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Seattle City Council Unanimously Approves Income Tax For the Rich (geekwire.com)
reifman writes: Amazon, tech employees and those making $250,000 or more annually in Seattle will now pay a 2.25 percent income tax. "The Seattle City Council estimates that the tax would bring in an additional $140 million each year," reports GeekWire. "The revenue would go toward the city's housing affordability agenda and carbon reduction goals and supplant federal funds if they are cut. The revenue is also intended to alleviate the burden of Washington's property and sales taxes, which are often called the most regressive in the country." Anyone who's seen Amazon's impacts on Seattle and its low and middle income residents will appreciate how this tax will help the homeless, lower income and improve the environment. Not everyone is thrilled with the recently approved legislation. Jason Mercier, who directs the center for government reform with the Washington Police Center, said: "[The council is] going to unanimously adopt an illegal income tax that has no hope of taking effect and will waste taxpayer resources on litigation the city is sure to lose." The measure is expected to be challenged in court, as Washington's constitution states "a county, city, or city-county shall not levy a tax on net income." According to The Washington Post, Mercier said there is decade of case law saying that a graduated income tax is unconstitutional because income is property and under the constitution, property tax has to be taxed uniformly and no more than 1 percent.
In 10 years, the Seattle City council will complain about the impact of commuters on its road infrastructure, with larger and larger numbers of tech workers living outside the city where they are not subjects to Seattle taxes
lucm, indeed.
I mean where I live you are happy to get 50% of your income after tax.
is all in favor of local government right up until they do something they don't like. Then they want the State gov't to step in and outlaw it. The State gov'ts seem about perfect. Big enough to oppress but not so big they can't just buy them all out.
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This is ridiculous, how pampered are you? $100k might be pushing it, but $250k for an INDIVIDUAL is most definitely "rich", and if you feel threatened by it, good.
Why good? Are you saying he didn't earn that money?
Yeah, that was my first thought, when did $250K a year define you as rich?
In *every* part of the US, that will define you as rich. If you can afford a $50,000 car, you are rich. If you can afford a 2000+ sqft home, you are rich. If you can afford to buy a decaf latte grande every day, you are rich. *Most* americans live paycheck to paycheck and are vastly in debt. Slashdotters are not typical people. Moreover, most slashdotters don't even know anyone who isn't rich. They will live in a rich neighborhood, and work with rich people, and buy everything online, or from stores staffed by the children of rich people. On the rare occasion when they do go into a walmart, they look at the cashier with pitty thinking that these are the only poor people. They never see the 5,000 people who would kill just to get that walmart job. They never see the people working the warehouse jobs, or the folks living in the places where you joke about being unsafe to drive at night. They simply don't understand that their world is the exception not the rule.
The other side of that are the working class and poor. They know the rich exist, but they never see them, they never get to go into those neighborhoods. Their kids don't go to the same schools with the rich kids so they never have a reason to meet with the rich parents at PTA meetings (assuming they could even get enough time off work to go).
The simple truth is there are two Americas. There is the one you live in, and the one they live in. I sincerely hope you never have to live in their world because it is a pale shadow of the America you live in. In spite of that fact, their lifes work means you can get your stuff cheap online and in store. They buy the products that directly or indirectly fund your huge paychecks. In a very real sense, they are very nearly modern day slaves who's entire existences fuels your lifestyle.
The average American watching TV is looking at a lifestyle that is beyond their own. They can only aspire to have the kind of wealth they see on their nightly sitcoms and dramas, but they watch anyways always dreaming that they live those lives instead of their own.
I could give you a million places to look where you could peel back the veil of abject poverty and see the new slave class this country has embraced, but it is probably better that you continue to live the fantasy so that you can pursue the things that just might actually make a better tomorrow for everyone. If you had to face the demons that comes with your own wealth, it might destroy the fragile innocence that allows you to sleep at night.
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I live in Seattle. You can debate the merits of having an income tax, or not. But you'd have to be an outright moron to think they would keep the threshold at $250K. Now they're saying "we'll have an income tax at $250K, we'll solve the homeless problem with the money". In 4 years, homeless issue will be worse, and they'll say "we'll make it $175K and we'll solve the homeless problem". 4 more years, "Let's make it $100K and we'll solve the homeless problem". Once the mechanism is in place they (the gummint) won't be able to control themselves.
Because the sure fire way to up your standard of living is under Socialism right? If you had not noticed, that only works in rare cases with certain people in power. Didn't work out well for most of the world, and sure as hell keeps people wanting to move out of even the best of the socialist countries. Talk to a Fin, German, or Swede about their great economic mobility opportunities. (real people, not fabricated media reports).
Notice that there is no mention of "local" Government in our founding documents or our Constitution. Pushing to re-establish the Constitution is what the majority of people (read Not Politicians) want. This does put more power back into the State, where it was meant to be concentrated. It is much easier for the populace to have control over their State Government. The State is supposed to be a higher authority than a city/local Government.
If your State does not address the issue, it's not magically a Federal issue. It remains a local/city issue. When the majority of people in that income range move and the city loses all that magical revenue they spent, you can vote them out and put in fiscally responsible politicians.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
https://www.usnews.com/news/be...
http://www.kitsapsun.com/story...
http://www.investopedia.com/ar...
You can also see it in the cost of a 26' UHaul between Texas and California/NY
Los Angeles, CA to Dallas, TX: $2,558
Dallas TX to Los Angeles: $1,232
NY, NY to Dallas, TX: $2,772
Dallas TX to NY, NY: $653
Its really depends on your lifestyle and how good you are with your money. Factors, like kids, marriages, do you need new shit all the time, are you a compulsive buyer or are you complete coal smuggler.
I've found that how you spend ends up dictating your financial situation almost as much as your salary.
a little extra tax that won't impact their lifestyle but will offset the negative effect they are having on everyone living around them?
That's the dual fallacy of bleeding heart liberals, especially those who don't have themselves a decent income.
First, that wealthy people have a negative effect on people living around them. That's simply not true, you're just demonizing people that *you don't know* for the sake of justifying the theft of their money. Second, tax money doesn't "offset" negative effects, they simply make the city adminisitration fatter and more powerful.
For people who want to help the poor, there's charity and various NGOs. Leave the others alone and take your socialist views to one of those successful socialist countries, as soon as you find one.
lucm, indeed.
Given how frequent stories like this are in America, it always baffles me that Americans are so vehemently opposed to the kind of social healthcare enjoyed by Europe. When even the rich can be stung badly by medical bills and uncooperative insurers, it seems odd that they would reject the idea of getting rid of the insurers, paying a similar amount in tax instead, and getting healthcare for everyone without the risk of people missing out or being shafted by their insurers.
I know it's all about that dreaded T-word. Americans hate the idea of being taxed. But really, the way things are set up now, you're effectively paying the same money to a private company. It may just as well be a tax.
The American mind is trapped by ideology and propaganda. We have a strong myth of the self-made man who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, without help from others. The very wealthy perpetuate that myth because it serves to insulate them from judgement about the degree of their wealth. The money a person has "earned" is theirs to do with as they please, regardless of how disproportionate it might be or whatever else might be true. You see this in the irrational anti-tax attitudes you mentioned as well.
The lower classes have also been conditioned to fight each other rather than band together. This is again by design. The owners have historically pitted groups against each other to keep them from uniting against a common enemy. So when people see public sector union workers (for example) getting benefits, they want to take those benefits away rather than ask why they also are not receiving those benefits.
What this means is that many people vote for values rather than policies. They vote for the person who will maintain or implement the proper order of things, as they see it. Basically, they are more concerned with making sure the next guy is as miserable as they are, than they are with creating a shared prosperity.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)